New England Update

Jul 15

Updates from New England!

Greetings from the great state of Maine! Cristina is behind the wheel of our massive Ford Excursion as we make our way through the lush green back roads towards the stunning Acadia National Park. Once we reach this park we have officially hit the furthest point away from our home base of Santa Cruz we’ll travel on our entire tour. Every day from here on out we are officially inching our way back “home”.

So today is a bit of a monumental day for us for several other reasons: We are just about ready to cross the “1/2 way mark” of our tour, we have finally caught up with our photos (yipeee!), we have nearly sold out of our first printing of books, and I begun editing and re-working the book to print a “2nd Edition” shortly. So it seemed fitting to send a newsletter as I know we have not been sending many since we embarked on this wild journey.

When I first announced I was going to do a “Family Book Tour” last year many of my fellow parents said “That’s going to be amazing but I’m sure it will be very hard”. When I shared it with folks in the publishing industry who were also parents the responses went up several notch to something like “Are you insane?”

Honestly, we did not know what to expect when we set off from Santa Cruz last April towards San Luis Obispo. We figured we’d kick off and adjust as time went on. The first realization was that the predictions were right—it was hard. Hard on us. Hard on the kids. Our life bordered insanity most of the time as we struggled to balance a highly demanding schedule of long travel days, media appearances, speaking gigs and countless late nights and early mornings in front of the computer and on the phone planning future events, media and travel in 38 different tour stops. At the pace we’re going now we’ll do over 100 talks by the time the tour is over. Phew!

But, as expected, we adjusted. We settled in. The kids are now on new gypsy hours of an 11PM bedtime and regularly sleep in till about 9-10AM. Cristina and I have learned how to say “no” when we receive too many heartwarming invitations to share our story thus allowing us to maintain some family-work balance. We have mastered our Heartland RV Basecamp setup and takedown without yelling at each other. We’re now scheduling official “down time” to dedicate time and energy to our family. In the last two months we’ve only had one “weekend” where I was not working—in New Orleans—and it was the best 2 days of the tour by far! So Maine downtime is just what the doctor ordered.

So is it “insane” running a Family Book Tour? Sure, a bit. But it’s worth it. We’ve met dozens of new friends for life while sharing our story around the country to hundreds of thousands of people via live talks, print/tv/radio media and, of course, in the book. Our kids are growing leaps and bounds socially and the time we are able to enjoy together as a family is, without a doubt, priceless.

I know we have not been sending newsletters or doing much blogging but we are very active in the new social media platforms like Instagram & Twitter (@peacepedalers for both) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/abicyclebuiltfortwobillion) so if you want to know what we are up to and where we are on any day you can follow our daily posts at those social media sites. For those who still resist the social media stuff we’re building a photo and journal page that will house all our photo albums with captions and, as soon as we can, journals for each tour stop. This page now has all our latest photo albums from California to Vermont so enjoy!

http://abicyclebuiltfortwobillion.com/photos-and-journals

So in less than an hour we’ll arrive in Bar Harbor, Maine and ride our bikes around one of the world’s most stunning natural wonders as a family. I’m officially on holiday from that moment onwards all the way through 4th of July weekend and hope to slingshot out rested, recharged and ready to enjoy a steady stream of events in Boston, Massachusetts down to Providence, Rhode Island into Connecticut and down to New York!

July 7, Rocky Hill, CT, (between New Haven and Springfield). Invitation Only dinner with Rotary.

Have you read “A Bicycle Built for Two Billion”?

Since you have read this far down and if have a copy of my book (and have at least started reading it), I would love to hear what you think. I’m working on a 2nd edition of the book now and want to make it much, much better than the 1st edition. Unfortunately, like many of the projects in my life, I was rushed due to a very late delivery of edits from my editor. So I did not get a chance to really, truly soul search and check in with the heart before publishing the 1st edition. I’m doing so now. And I’m also asking folks for their honest opinion such as:

What was your favorite part of the book?
What was your least favorite?
What part(s) of the book did you get a bad taste in your mouth?
Any parts where you just got totally lost and/or frustrated?
If you stopped reading the book for a while, where did you stop and why?
Any suggestions for things that can/should be eliminated? Or added?
Any ideas in general love to hear them.

I plan to send the 2nd edition to print in a few weeks so I’d love any feedback, either general or specific. THANK YOU!
We are pulling off into the visitors center now. Over n out from Maine!!!

You can check out the latest photos from Vermont and New Hampshire at this link

Finally, I’m very excited to announce that we’ll be releasing an e-book series, three books in total, taking you around the world in far more detail than the memoir. It’s more of a real travelogue series and I’m working with author Kevin Kato on this. He just finished his book on Cambodia here and is editing the first of three books in our series now. Very excited about this!

—-Update: I’m in Rhode Island now! Maine was very refreshing and fired us up for a very jam packed schedule (5 talks in the next week! Yikes!!)

An exhilarating debut memoir that chronicles a fallen entrepreneur’s eight-year world tour on a tandem bike. Bianchini’s extraordinary chronicle begins with his often tumultuous childhood and showcases his enduring love of bicycle-riding. He sometimes felt overshadowed by his large extended Northern California family, which fractured when his parents divorced, but his outings on his bike

Once I started reading I just couldn’t put it down. The story ended up being so much more than I had expected…more engaging, more unpredictable, more emotional. Jamie shares his own life journey even as he shares a perspective of the world few of us get to see in any country let alone many across

As the World Turns “A great ride and finding time to stop and smell the flowers along the way… cultural exposures, meeting people…ups and down of daily life… Ran into these adventurers in Paraguay on the “long bike . Nice to read about their entire exploits… easy reading…” Related

Total Adventure “Even though I already had a connection to this book because I had met Jaimie and Garryck in Japan, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the writing and story layout was. I read 100 pages the first day, simply because I couldn’t put it down! Both then and now, Jaimie has reminded

Very pleasantly surprised with this book! Bianchini takes a big bite outta life in this adventure (and sometimes pays the price). His honesty is well, honest and his heart seems to be fixed in just the right place. This is definitely ‘feel good’ terrain but with a goal in mind. I highly recommend “A Bicycle